Overview

Gender

male

Santiago is a seasoned European entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, where he co-founded 10darts, a communications platform as-a-sevice (CPaaS), and Onpublico, a citizen journalism community leader in local news in the US hispanic market. His experience in startups and network in the Valley made the Spanish Government choose him to set up their startups incubator in San Francisco. Prior to that, Santiago joined the most successful Spanish startup created in the 2000’s, Lanetro – Zed, taking it from scratch to a pre-IPO status within 9 years. Santiago was one of the four C-class team members that took it from a non-revenue status to generating $500m in yearly revenue, managing 150m users worldwide and having operations in 14 countries. In this company, he set up and launched several new business divisions, including the Global Business Development and the Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, managed the operations in the UK, the largest market, and headed the legal department.

Santiago graduated from law school in Madrid and holds 2 masters degrees from the University of London (LLM) and the IESE Business School (Global Executive MBA). He has enjoyed pitching top-notch Sand Hill Road VCs (including Sequoia, Greylock and Andreessen Horowitz) and has also suffered the vertigo of not having enough cash for the payroll 2 weeks before it is due. A strategic thinker and thoroughly data-driven, Santiago is resilient, very curious, an outstanding communicator, skilled negotiator and trusted advisor. He has been collaborating with Students Rising Above for the last 5 years, where he mentors high school seniors with challenging social conditions and outstanding personal and academic potential. Coming from a large family with 7 siblings, the usual startup chaos makes him feel truly at home and comprehensively challenged.